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As the title states my project has turned a critical corner. After may months of planning and measuring and prognosticating how great it will be, I put down the sand blaster and stripping pad and got down to real work.

I purchased my 914 with the plan of dong this swap. The motor is from my ex-daily driver that I managed to shorten a bit. The 914 that I am starting with has been restored once before and had a decent autocross suspension. The first thing I did to it was to upgrade the front calipers to 3-series BMW. It is not perfect but is pretty clean and straight. The only part that had not been repainted was found behind the heat/sound pad in the engine compartment. The plan is to repair some shoddy patch work in the battery tray area and repaint the engine compartment once all of the fab work is complete for the swap.

Project details:

Engine:

’05 Subaru STi

Trans:

Stock…for now

Adapter Plate/Clutch:

Kennedy Engineering adapter plate and Stage 3 clutch.

Engine Mount:

Modified Small Car Performance mounts bolted to the stock engine bar. The solid body mounts at the ends of the bar have been replaced with stiff 911 mounts. The engine bar has been modified to accommodate the mounts without changing the position of the bar.

Oil Pan:

I will probably take the easy way out and have Small Car Performance shorten and box out the stock pan.

Exhaust:

Custom exhaust will be made starting with Outback stub headers. 2” tubing will be run to the turbo from each header. Exhaust from the turbo will be 3” SS to a straight through MagnaFlow muffler. The exhaust will exit in the stock location (maybe people will not notice anything unusual about the car when they pull up next to it).

Electrical:

The entire electrical system will be taken from the STi harness with unnecessary parts removed. This may seem like a lot of effort but it will provide a much needed update to the old stock harness and allow me to still develop my digital display product. It will also make it straight forward to use the throttle by wire.

Cooling:

Ron Davis 28” x 16” x 3” double pass radiator mounted in the front vented through the hood like wbergtho’s. The current plan is to run the cooling lines through the center tunnel.

Steering:

The stock steering column will be replaced by a shortened STi column. This will allow use easy use of the of the stalk switches and more importantly, the RF ID security key system. Initial measurements show that this will be fairly straight forward to do and will also give the benefit of adjustable steering wheel height.

Seating:

Momo Start. These seats were chosen because of the FIA certified seats they have the thinnest seat cushion and are bottom mounted to allow for the lowest possible seating position (they are also quite economical). I tried a set of Corbeau seats that I had from another project and I hardly fit in the car at all much less with a helmet on.

Belts:

For the road I am going to run Schroth Rallye Cross 4-points. They are DOT approved and have a quick latch mechanism. I will install 6 points for track use.

Intercooler:

A 25” x 12” x 3” Ebay bar and plate front mount intercooler will be mounted to the top of the engine. While this is not ideal, the intercooler will get quite a bit of fresh air from in front of the engine. The engine lid will be modified to a GT style so that as much air can flow through the area as possible. 3” Al tubing will be run from the turbo to the intercooler and on to the throttle body.

Oiling:

A remote filter/cooler is necessary because the stock oil/water cooler does not quite fit with the engine mount in place.

Unresolved Items:

Turbo placement.

It is awfully tight under there even with some of the sheet metal removed. We will find out on Saturday, that is when the exhaust will come together.

Cooling lines:

The plan is to run them through the tunnel in thin walled Al or SS tubing. With the heater control and throttle cable tubes removed, two 1” od test tubes fit to the front of the tunnel. I would like to use slightly larger tubes and still need to fit the fuel and brake lines. The tightest spot is right at the shifter. I am considering widening the tunnel at this point.

Throttle Pedal:

I am not sure how to mount the STi electronic throttle. In the Suby it is top pivoting. This may be uncomfortable with the floor pivot brake and clutch pedals. I have also considered linking the throttle sensor to the stock 914 pedal. This will have to wait until I have seats in the car again.

Starter:

Not really a problem…just have not picked one out yet.

Wipers:

I have not yet checked if the STi wiper control system will run the 914 wiper motor.

As much as possible items will be mounted to the engine in a way that will allow for minimal disassembly when removing the engine/trans. The current exhaust/turbo plumbing plan should all come out with the engine with the exception of the supply to the turbo.

Timing….the goal is to have it ready for the track day at Mid Ohio on Oct. 6th. This is a bit aggressive, especially considering that I will be vacationing in London for 8 days at the end of the month. I have been making great progress the past month and I have most of the critical parts already. Just need to keep plugging along and hope that my friends keep helping. Without them this project would not be possible.

Now for the important stuff…the pictures.

This is the engine that I started with, it came out of my daily driver STi that came to an untimely death:

When the timing belt broke 2 valves were bent so a teardown was necessary:

Here is a picture of the unmodified Small Car Performance engine brackets mounted to the bottom of the engine. They wrapped nicely around the oil pan. There was a slight interference between the water line from the oil/water cooler that required a notch.

You may have noticed that a notch was taken out of the top of the mount. This is a mistake and is not necessary. While the mount is very solid and should do its job very well, it is not as tidy as I would prefer. I may make another one paying a bit more attention to the finish portion of “Fit & Finish.” Now that I have this one made it would be easy to make a jig to make another mount.

You also probably noticed that everything looks pretty bad in the engine compartment. I am partially through stripping/restoring the engine compartment. I took a break from that work to do the more interesting fabrication work. The engine/trans need to come out again so that I can run the cooling, fuel and brake lines. The beautification will be completed at this time.

I am sure that I missed some details so feel free to ask questions. Also feel free to use my mount design. If you order the parts from Small Car Performance, mention this post...maybe if a few people order the parts I can get a discount on my oil pan work.

COOL!!! It will be really interesting to see how this engine works with a 901 transmission. Sounds like you have quite a project on your hands but you've identified a lot of the tricky aspects. I'll definitely be watching whatever progress is posted.

Where are you planning to put the turbo? Do you think you have enough space for the shift linkage?

I have had the shift linkage installed (not sure why I don't have a picture) and it works as well as stock. The exhaust tube that will connect the left header to the turbo needs to make a slight jog around the shifter shaft but that is not a problem. The turbo will go behind the right head, as far up and to the right as possible. I hope to have the pressure side of the exhaust done tomorrow so we will find out soon if my plan will work.

Im sorry for asking, I may not have read enoguh yet, but did you make those mounts your self or buy them and adapt them for your purpose? BTW awesome project. hopefully I will be doing this in the future.

I've dealt with Small Car Performance many times. They also supply type IV stuff. I usually get my Mahle oil filters, and consummables from them. Good people. They do conversions in their shop and keep trying to get me do this same conversion. The last time I was in there they had a WRX engine sitting on the floor and thet keept saying it had my name on it.

Interesting engine mount. That is almost exactly how I am doing mine (just an N/A 2005 RS engine) except I am not using the stock engine bar. I'm using the 911 sport mounts at all 4 corners.

When I ordered my parts from Small Car Performance they told me that one other person had ordered them for a 914 Suby conversion...I guess that would be you. Do you have any pictures of your setup? I checked your blog but did not see any.

We made most of the pressure side exhaust yesterday. We did not finish because I messed up the tube order and ended up one bend short. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif) Still need to finish the collector into the turbo and final weld the seams, it is now only tacked.

The turbo fits! It was tight but clears everything. The final position will be slightly different than what is shown in the picture, it is only sitting on the tube right now so it rotated a bit.

The major problem with the turbo location is caused by the waste gate actuator. It would be a much better fit if an external waste gate turbo were used. When I upgrade the trans I will also upgrade the turbo. This is why I did not make this part of the exhaust out of SS, the rest will be.